Any Electric Bike owners here?

[PHC1]

Seems the E-Bikes are starting to gain popularity. Anyone riding an E-bike here?

[PHC1]

Cross Country Olympic Athlete Vs E Bike | Can An E-MTB Beat A World Cup Pro?

What is faster in a mountain bike race, an elite cross country pro or an e bike? To find out we set Olympic Athlete and multiple national champion Grant Ferguson the challenge of racing Chris around the Dalby Forest World Cup course….

https://youtu.be/2NkMrgoCIiE

[radio times]

Thinking of getting one. They tend to be made of alu, which doesn't have the life span of steel, and you need some extra ingenuity and expense to de regulate them as they are fixed at 15 mph, but if you run fat mtb tires on an mtb type bike it should OK. A Chinese co called Bafang do a mid mount kit for your normal bike which can really put out the speed with 500/750/1000 watt motors, but you can't get 'em in regular bike shops in London. In the shires the shops can help. I don't fancy buying them on line. The bad point's? They are expensive, good one's can be more or a lot more than a 125 cc m/bike, and the battery pack will degrade within a year of moderate to heavy use and cost around $1K to replace. But they are fun and addictive and I'd recommend them to all AA members; the 20 mph limit in the US is plenty fast enough for those who left push bikes behind in their youth.

[JMAC]

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Serge, good post, but was hoping it was something like this:


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John
I ride the





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[Puma Cat]

No, but I would love to have one. Specialized makes at least 3 different lines of electric bikes, including off-road mountain bikes.

[bart]

My wife has one.
With a full battery, she can reach 100 km.
Max. speed (legally) is 26-27 km/h here, which is already quite fast when I accomapny her on a normal bike.
She enjoys it very much.
She wasn't sportive at all before, but now she rides very often.
Yesterday she visited her friend, who lives 57 km away, and returned on the same day!

[meza]

Originally Posted by bart

My wife has one.
With a full battery, she can reach 100 km.
Max. speed (legally) is 26-27 km/h here, which is already quite fast when I accomapny her on a normal bike.
She enjoys it very much.
She wasn't sportive at all before, but now she rides very often.
Yesterday she visited her friend, who lives 57 km away, and returned on the same day!

I love my e-bike! It is a KOGA KGBO04573 (they do not make that model anymore), it is a city bike with a 15 gear Shimano shifter combined with 5 different e-assistance programs. You can manually switch off the light during the day thus when not needed (not all bikes have this option. Good because it saves battery)
Another thing nice to have: a backlit display. My e-bike does not have it and the display is completely unreadable in the dark.
LI-ION 2.0 battery shows no signs of wavering after 1 year of usage. On the contrary, I get about 10% more mileage now.

The fully removable battery is located under the luggage carrier. I know that the current trend favors built-in batteries in the middle of the frame, but I'm a fan of the removable battery.
Remove the battery and you have a normal city bike with plenty of gears to chose from. (Lights won't work with battery though). I also think it's a further advantage that you can remove the battery (and put it in yr backpack) when carrying the bike up a staircase or want to lift it into the car.

For the e-bike usage the 15 gear is totally wasted on me considering that I am only using the top 4 gears, but when cycling without battery they are welcome.

The e-assistance on the other hand leaves me wanting.
I mostly use position 2, the "cruise" pre-selection.
Position 1 is basically eliminating the assistance of the battery down to the the same level as cycling without a battery. Positions 3 and up give increasing assistance, but I rarely use them.
I'd welcome more an additional step between position 1 and 2 as well as 2 and 3.

I guess all depends on what you want from your bike. I like the fact that I can go everywhere I want and do not have to worry whether I'll be too tired to get home.... It's knowing that when tired I could ask the bike for more assistance...

Having said that I need to add that my yesterday's trip shows that riding e-bike is not always a walk in the park - heavy headwind on my way back home and my stubbornness (refusing to go further than assistance position 3) made for a very tired woman to arrive home yesterday afternoon. ( + sore muscles today)

[Kingrex]

Bikes are a sore subject in Seattle. As much as they are loved, they are not fit to be used in a city with heavy high speed traffic. They are fit for kids smart enought to ride on back streets or college campus. Ebikes encourage more people to be stupid and hog major roads. Then they suffer life long debilitating injuries and blamb others. Just yesterday a woman on a leisurely ride was taking a lane of a major highway overpass. Just oblivious, or intentionally hampering hundreds of cars. All the wile an elevated pedestrian path 5 feet wide with no one on it is next to her. They have become weapons of the social warrior, willing to die for a cause. Its a shame. I use to live to ride. Its just way to dangerous with Seattle making bike lanes of all the major high speed roads. Scares the crap out of me. I only use residential Backstreet's if I ever get on one.

[Antonmb]

Originally Posted by Kingrex

Bikes are a sore subject in Seattle.

And then there are those awful Lime e-bikes, which litter the streets. I was downtown a couple of weeks ago for the first time in a couple of months, and the ugly things were everywhere, abandoned in the middle of sidewalks and dumped in the park by the market. Last year there was a Coast Guard search at a cost of $17k because someone left a share bike behind on a ferry, and there was no way to know if someone had gone overboard.

[PHC1]

Originally Posted by Antonmb

And then there are those awful Lime e-bikes, which litter the streets. I was downtown a couple of weeks ago for the first time in a couple of months, and the ugly things were everywhere, abandoned in the middle of sidewalks and dumped in the park by the market. Last year there was a Coast Guard search at a cost of $17k because someone left a share bike behind on a ferry, and there was no way to know if someone had gone overboard.

Probably not nearly as many as in China?